Abstract
This work views social entrepreneurship from a neuroscientific lens and unravels new insights into the field. It builds upon what we already know about social entrepreneurship's micro-aspects and tries to refute specific assumptions. Specifically, this work attempts to – [1] employ dopamine as a tool of neuroscience and argues it to be the origin of social entrepreneurship; [2] This understanding helps theorize how social entrepreneurship driven by dopamine attracts the dark side of entrepreneurship, eventually trickling down to the downside, and destructive side; [3] This paper depicts why social entrepreneurship needs a neurological lens by arguing how pure cognitive or behavioral investigation (although necessary) might be insufficient to understand the rich phenomenon of social entrepreneurship fully. For instance, this paper leverages the affective neuroscience literature to depict that empathy doesn’t (necessarily) lead to social entrepreneurship; instead, compassion does. Thus, this paper is about questioning the old and comfortable truths about social entrepreneurship.